The little goblin stares blankly at Kalim, blinking stupidly. Huh? he drops to his knees and starts to lick Kalim's leather boots.
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"Toe lickin' Slorb, yer holinuss." He averts looking at the almighty Father of the Orctown.
"Me careeeee stuff...me do guud. Me strong." a little goblin is scurrying around Karnog's feet. "Me be guud pack mule." <Hop hop hop>
Guud, guud look like duergars," he comments to the dwarves.
"Guud language is goblin or undercomm'n"
The once-natural tunnel has been worked and cleared. Lights shine dimly along the way, seemingly radiating from the rocks themselves. The sandy floor reveals evidence of wagon tracks and humanoid footprints. Sloping slightly downward, the passage measures about 100 ft. across. Following this passage for about two miles, you discover the goblin
The actual trip takes a few hours to make and your guide who introduces himself as Toe Lickin' Slorb seems to be taking his time. He enjoys the non-goblin company and likes the items Meath'd trades if for. of course, Meathd is thrilled to get his hands on a jar of pickled brown spiders. He finally gets to his point and tell you."You and yous," pointing to Karnog and Malcolm, "have very bad mojo in city, goblins and others not as worldly as Slorb, they don't like evil symbols." He points to your holy symbols. "Plus you and yous" pointing to Karnog agian and now Grung, "be nasty dwarfies, not like those either." Then his little finger extends at Feli, "Pointy ears no guud either, need floppy ears like me." His bulbous eyes widen, 'Hidy...hidy if you can. Speak guud language if you can." His big ole eye lids blink a few times, "Now you be heroes come and kill bad snaky, goblins like...even if dwarf...but not bad mojo symbols, still need to hide those."
Malcolm's helmetlight loses some of its vigor, and the hot springs’ swirling mists create a surreal effect of shimmering colors as they reflect the feeble light. A vast darkness can be seen moving against the distant, gloomy background. There are a mated pair of umbral dragons in the massive cavern. The male umbral dragon inspects the visitors to determine if they are friend (goblins) or food (anyone else). Your goblin scout scurries about speaking frantically to the dragons. the other goblins provide a wide berth around you, just in case, the dragon decide you are food. But to everyone's relief they let you pass. The goblin who speaks broken common comments, "Eat all non-goblin, no eat you cuz me tells 'im you guud trad'rs. Bestest if you no come back this way, unless you goblin lookin'. Some goblin's sell pow'rful goblin mojo to make you look like mighti gobl'n, guud mojo not bad mojo like words stol'n from head." The group pauses. "I lead you below now, mighty troop stay behind." He points to his scouting force.
"You zoom zoom make boom and kaboo." He smirks.
Slorb come begins to rouse the goblin heroes the morning. "You be gone." He kicks dirt on several of you. "Chief give you this." He hands over Scribblefaces crudely drawn map.
"Bring fireworks back t'day or don't come back." He emphasizes the word don't. "You heroes... chief give you these." He dumps the remaining fireworks on the ground near the dwindling bonefire. There are two Desnan candles, four paper candles, and a skyrocket.
The tribesman comes back with bloodied clubs laughing, "Big fun, more more." Slorb looks at Sparque, "You hide now....loan of chief's prize still guud. You hide we find, we clobber." Sparque you gulp as you see Biter stumbling back within a whisker of consciousness, he looks dazed and confused....very likely a closed head injury. but like a good trooper you set off to find a good hiding spot behind a stump...wonder what this red stuff is behind this stomp, smells coppery. As you settle into the same hiding spot that Biter just had. DM rolls:
Perception:
the goblins hunt and hunt for you for a good 3 minutes before they get bored and go back to the feast, leaving you out there for another hour or so. When you finally come back in you are presented with a valuable prize which is on LOAN, like the Gorge of Gluttons. "You no bring back, you better no come back. This be Chief's mystical Ring That Lets You Climb Real Good (a ring of climbing)."
"Ooooooooooooooooh...ear biter...chomp chomp and stomp, munch em, crunch em, punch em." The goblin horde chants. As the group parts to show the fun toy that has been rolled out from behind the palace, you can see parts of ears tangled in the rusty contraption. Several goblins have torn flesh from their fingers, hands and legs from rolling the coil out for the games. The infamous Rusty Earbiter is a hollow coil of rusty wires, barrel hoops, bent swords, and thorny branches and vines. The Rusty Earbiter is both an object of fascination and fear for the Licktoads. The half-insane tinkerer who invented the thing has long since died (carried off one night by a giant bird of some sort after his first and only test of a prototype bird-attracting hat), but his legacy lives on. The other goblins cheer and hoot when Sqarque is dared to crawl through the Rusty Earbiter. Rusty Earbiter:
A goblin who agrees to this dare must climb into one end of the Rusty Earbiter and then wriggle through it, coming out the other side. There’s no time limit to get this done, but the faster the better! Climbing through the Rusty Earbiter requires a series of three DC 15 Escape Artist checks as the goblin must writhe through a series of tight squeezes. Each Escape Artist check takes 1 full round to attempt, and each one must be repeated until a successful check is made before moving on to the next one (or, in the case of the last check, successfully crawling out the far end of the tube). Each failed Escape Artist check causes 1d4–2 points of damage (a result of less than 1 point of damage indicates no damage is taken) from the Rusty Earbiter's spiky spikes. Slorb announces, "crawl fast...git to use chief's Personal Very Useful Robe That Is Useful." When that coveted prize is announced there a roar of stomps. 'Chief by too kind ...to kind."
"You get more slugs!" Looking at Zunk's greenish-yellow face. "Plenty of slugs." he giggles. "Eat, Eat...don't worry no stinky feet." He giggles. The his eyes moves over to Sqarque and Biter. "which of you want to play hide and git clobbered and which one want to try the fun rusty earbiter?" The goblins go nuts when those two games are mentioned. "Mighty Chief has more prizes if you win."
The goblins cheer at the two goblins vying for the right to eat wiggly bull slugs. "rassle...rassle for th slugs...rassle rassle." Mog is too quick and snatches the bag and starts to woof the slithery suckers down. Everyone hoots and hollers as he tries to win the prize.
Slorb tearfully stands and holds up a bag...{b]"Who be brave and eat bag o'slugs."[/b] This gets the crowd chanting gleefully as this is one of the tribes favorite dares. "Eat...Eat...eat or get beat...beat...beat." The bag is moving as Slorb walks around gettign the crowd pumped up. "Who be brave, who eat sluggs real quick?" she stops before the Zunk...the fat goblin. "Yuu rockbelly...eat slugs fast, keep down? Win use of big prize." He motions over to the chief who shows the crowd the prize. The chief holds up a splendid dogslicer his Gorge of Gluttons Eat a Bag of Bull Slugs Real Quick: Bull slugs are black,
wriggling slugs the size of sausages. Even among the goblins, they’re considered particularly foul-tasting and, because of the large amounts of slime they exude, difficult to chew. A covered wicker basket containing the slug bag is brought before the goblin who accepts this dare, along with a napkin made out of a soggy leaf. The goblin has 1 minute to eat an entire bag of bullslugs to win this dare. Eating the slugs is not a problem, even though they wriggle, taste of rotten fish, and burst with a little squeal when chewed. Eating a full bag in a minute is the hard part. There are five slugs in the bag, and successfully eating one requires a DC 15 Fortitude save (this drops to a DC 10 Fortitude save if the goblin doesn’t bother to spit out the slug’s mildly poisonous slime bladder—but neglecting to take care not to eat the slime bladder could have repercussions). Eating a slug is a full-round action (because of the squirming), and
The festivities get off to rowdy start and soon the murmurs begin to turn to goblin game dares to show off your heroics. A chant begins,
Slorb steps up and points to Freigaar then the others. "Freigaar volunteer'd, me hear it wit me ears. ...he first, he first." he glances back at the Chief who's busy gnawing the head off of white mouse. The goblin crowd quiets down once they hear a goblin foolishly agreed to the death sentence of riding the most fierce creature in the village. The mighty boar Squeally Norg (who is actually a piglet but you're golbins they all look the same.) In deference to the crazy Freignaar the goblins part providing room for hims to make his death march to the pit of death. Everyone knows that Squeally has been known to consume anything unlucky enough to fall unconscious within his pit, usually corpses but that frightens the goblins with all their superstitions. Squeally Nord Dare:
His pit itself is circular, nearly
20 feet in diameter, and just over 10 feet deep. “Dancing with Squealy Nord” requires a goblin to spend 18 seconds (3 rounds) riding on the piglet's back. Squealy Nord is tethered for this dare, then released into the pit from a narrow corral with the mounted goblin clinging onto his back and generally screaming a lot. A DC 15 Ride check is required each round to stay on Nord’s back as he races about. With a failed check, the goblin is thrown and takes 1d3 points of damage if he fails a DC 10 Reflex save. "When Freignaar fall, and is eaten, who be next?"
Those not dashing out of the palace in glee, walk out with Slorb who comments, "Ride Squeally Nord great fun for tribe to watch, no kill no kill...bad mojo." His bulbous eyes widen. "More fun watch see you fall and stoep'd on. Win much for my pockets."
Slorb orients everyone and gets you all facing the proper way, "Now u grovel to chief. " Suddenly, Gutwad lets out a palace shacking belch-fart that stirs the dust on the floor and makes his toes curl. Slorb immediately drops to his knees in deference to the almighty explosion. "His mightiness has given sign that HE will speak directly to u's" He begins to kiss the dirty planks. "U be honored by this."
"Sit, sit but still grovel, grovel."
"You both blind chief there.' he points to the big throne and the enormously fat goblin perched and dressed in layers and layers of not so fancy upholstery fabric. "clean out eyes...poke them make them water....always work for me."
As you gather outside the palace with no-roof awaiting invitation to grovel at the feet of the almighty Gutwald who is always perched upon the massive Teeter Chair...the renowned throne of the kingdom. The vast goblin kingdom that extends to the big red oak tree 300 yards left and the giant pit to the right. Ah...the coveted Teeter Chair a symbol of goblin power. Other goblin's sensing something is up...basically, they were all smart enough to say no the the request, gather round and watch. When suddenly a raven swoops down and poops. 1 - Spargue, 2 - Zunk, 3 - Biter, 4- Mogmurch, 5 -Freigar
And with a tremendous splatter Sparque is christened by the raven's bladder. Then before your very eyes the cracked oaken door to the palace opens wide..."Chieftain Gutwad w'll see now."
"The moon and sun palace w'th the sky view." Of course rain, hail, snow, sleet, birds, and bugs can come inside too, but that's only incidental to the fact that he has the palace and you don't.
"I should fear you in the rear." The Chieftain's adviser groans as he rolls on the ground putting his jerkin out. He rolls around kicking up dirt, which goes flying into the fat goblins stew. Sputtering and wiggling he finally manages to say, 'Git to Chiefy's palace...he has job."
After kicking the dirt in Zunk's stew Slorb pulls out a mouse tail from his pocket; he begins to floss the large gap between his front teeth. He lets out a stinky gaseous fart and his eyes begins to water. "Need to find runt Biter and sticky fing'r M'murch." He puts one knobby finger to his nostril and forces snot out as he walks away. The mouse tail still between his teeth.
As Zunk settles in with his pot of stew Toe Lickin' Slorb walks up and kicks dirt in the stew pot, "Mighty chief want you....you wait outside h's palace. I's goes git others." |